Quote

The definition of good prose is proper words in their proper places of good verse, the most proper words in their proper places.The propriety is in either case relative. The words in prose ought to express the intended meaning, and no more if they attract attention to themselves, it is, in general, a fault.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

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Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Age: 61 †
Born: 1772
Born: October 21
Died: 1834
Died: July 25
Critic
Literary Critic
Philosopher
Poet
Theologian
Ottery St Mary
Devon
S. T. Coleridge
Words
General
Prose
Good
Poet
Definition
Propriety
Meaning
Proper
Verse
Poetry
Definitions
Attract
Cases
Faults
Verses
Ought
Express
Intended
Either
Case
Relative
Attention
Places
Fault

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Carved with figures strange and sweet, All made out of the carver's brain.
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Frenchmen are like gunpowder, each by itself smutty and contemptible, but mass them together and they are terrible indeed!
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Remorse weeps tears of blood.
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Love is the admiration and cherishing of the amiable qualities of the beloved person, upon the condition of yourself being the object of their action.
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Friends should be weighed, not told who boasts to have won a multitude of friends has never had one.
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God! sing, ye meadow-streams, with gladsome voice! Ye pine-groves, with your soft and soul-like sounds! And they too have a voice, you piles of snow, And in their perilous fall shall thunder, God!
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An ear for music is very different from a taste for music. I have no ear whatever I could not sing an air to save my life but I have the intensest delight in music, and can detect good from bad.
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A stately pleasure-dome decree.
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And they three passed over the white sands, between the rocks, silent as the shadows.
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During the act of knowledge itself, the objective and subjective are so instantly united, that we cannot determine to which of the two the priority belongs.
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Not the poem which we have read , but that to which we return , with the greatest pleasure, possesses the genuine power, and claims the name of essential poetry .
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To admire on principle is the only way to imitate without loss of originality.
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Every crime has, in the moment of its perpetration, Its own avenging angel-dark misgiving, An ominous sinking at the inmost heart.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
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A maxim is a conclusion upon observation of matters of fact, and is merely speculative a principle carries knowledge within itself, and is prospective.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
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Moral obligation is to me so very strong a Stimulant, that in 9 cases out of ten it acts as a Narcotic. The Blow that should rouse, stuns me.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
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If people could learn history, what lessons it might teach us!
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
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Ancestral voices prophesying war.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
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That gracious thing, made up of tears and light.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
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The fair breeze blew, The white foam flew, And the forrow followed free. We were the first to ever burst into the silent sea.
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I have found words [in the Bible] for my inmost thoughts, songs for my joy, utterances for my hidden griefs, and pleadings for my shame and my feebleness.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge